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Inception won't fail and it's not a omob but several critical flaws will come to define it and possibly Nolan.

1) Nolan substitutes brooding men for passionate romantic heroes. Note to Katie Holmes: All is forgiven. I'm still waiting for Nolan to be described as a closet misogynist. Mal is just the latest example of badly drawn women and relationships.

2) Where was Salvadore Dali when we needed him? There's nothing like 'Persistence of Memory' surrealism in Nolan's dream world. It's remarkably detailed and precise.

3) At the heart of Incepion is a heist flick and an average one at that.

4) AO Scott picked up on the biggest flaw: It substitutes contrived complexity for moral philosophy. The moral metaphysical issues are glossed over. The time spent explaining the dream world could have been better spent asking some hard questions. Even 'Avatar' succeeded at that level

Ishtar is still a bomb. I watch Heaven's Gate whenever IFC has it on. And I'm really excited that 'Wonder Woman' looks more like Megan Fox than Kathy Bates. Take that all you rotten feminazis! Male fantasies haven't evolved one whit in 40 years.

I listened to the books show. Seems to be a variation of the Sir Walter Scott critcisms and many of the points were made in Jefferson's "On the Dangers of Reading Fiction".

Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' wasn't very good. 'The DaVinci Code' was based on some proven source material. 'Holy Blood, Holy Cross' spawned dozens and dozens of influenced non-fiction books like 'The Jesus Mysteries' and 'The Woman with The Alabaster Jar' and 'The Templar Revelation'. Dan Brown's books had a ready made audience and plot. Even 'The Matrix' had a character called 'The Merovingian' as a nod to 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail'.

Dan Brown is like James Patterson. Breezy airport novels are not art. They aren't meant to be.

'Infinite Jest' is the only novel of the last 20 years along with Cormac McCarthy's stuff that regularly makes the lists of great novels. Some years ago someone said that great novels make lousy movies and bad novels make great movies.

No one's going to make a great movie out of Sartre, James Joyce, or even Faulkner.

That show was fun—of course I don't think I've ever passed by "Waterworld" without watching at least ten minutes of it.

As for the part of John Edwards, how about Peter Saarsgard? His roles have taken him all over the shop, but his performance in the greatly under-appreciated "Shattered Glass" (2003) makes him a natural. My only hesitation is that the 2003 role involved conflicted morality; I'm afraid John Edwards has become too sleazy a character (at least in the public's perception) to convince us that moral conflicts constitute even an iota of his temperament.

Sure, Dennis Quaid gets big points on the lookalike, but if he could pull it off, I would be utterly impressed with his chops. Jonathan Edwards oozed a vaguely repulsive sliminess from day one, from a woman's sense anyway. Dennis Quaid is so not that.

The interesting thing about Edwards is the 'soul of the Democratic Party' angle.

The lack of outrage by Democrats before and after the story broke is the real story.

Here's Edwards, having an affair on the campaign trail while his wife is having a relapse of her cancer, and then he gets his mistress pregnant! What about the campaign money and time spent by volunteers John? Aren't they owed anything for bad faith dealings? Or is that now OK?

Apparently Edwards refunded some money after the Warren Buffet's were calling for a class action lawsuit. Even that was mishandled as the moeny went to professional fundraisers not the grassroots contributors.

Depending on the source Edwards staff and prominent Democrats covered the whole thing up and were prepared to promote Edwards as VP again. Other sources say the leak came from Democrats who simply had to put an end to it. Edwards certainly wouldn't. He'd take the party down in flames and just shrug it off.

I was reminded last night that Dan Brown's biggest accomplishment was tapping into the conspiracy non-fiction market. His books have become interactive pieces of fiction spawning rebuttals. (I'm not sure if Umberto Eco wrote the only fictional rebuttal to the whole Christ conspiracy market. Robert Anton Wilson had his moments spoofing the Shirley Maclaine New Agers in his 'Illuminati' quadrology).

Not only are the Dan Brown fans passionate but they also they love the internet and are encouraged by some indisputable facts like Webster's CIA art monstrosity.

Most read fiction, even good fiction, and put it down. They aren't inspired to research the book and defend its theories. The conspiracy market is an entirely different beast.

There have been a few alternate histories of the US written and there's no shortage of Kennedy conspiracy books and films. I was reminded that a piece of fiction that puts all the leading theories into one alt-history airport novel would likely sell as well as Brown. Or at least Glenn Beck who does the same alt-history thing kind of.